I can't update my PowerPoint, my Excel file crashes

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Written by Romain | Updated

If Office applications crash when updating Excel links, it's probably because your Excel file has too many corrupted names. This article will show how our Clean feature can help you clean your file and give you an alternative if you don't have access to it.

Other error codes caused by this issue:

  • The application called an interface that was marshalled for a different thread. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8001010E (RPC_E_WRONG_THREAD))
  • The RPC server is unavailable. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x800706BA)
  • Not enough memory resources are available to complete this operation. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007000E (E_OUTOFMEMORY))

Summary

 

Root cause - how the Excel link works

When you create a link between Excel and PowerPoint/Word, UpSlide saves the link information in both applications:

  • In Excel, UpSlide creates a hidden name range to identify the exported element.
  • In Word, the link data is stored in the Alternative Text of the shape and contains information like the source file path used for the export, the name of the user who did the export, etc. For cell content exported as text, the link data is stored in a field.
  • In PowerPoint, the link data for exported text is stored in the hyperlink screen tip, and the link data for exported ranges/charts is stored in the shape tags.

UpSlide needs to access the information from the source (Excel) and the destination (PPT or Word) to update a link. If one of them is lost or corrupted, the update won’t work.

Resolution

UpSlide Clean

If you have the Modeling Tools option, you can use the Clean functionality to remove all corrupted names from your files. This option will not modify your current file but will create a cleaned copy, so you can keep the original in case you need it.

Ribbon clean.png

We recommend checking every option under Names to ensure that every corrupted name reference is cleaned. Removing names created by Factset and Capital IQ will not affect the working of either add-in.

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After the cleaning is complete, a prompt will show you how many names have been removed. If you try to update your links using the clean Excel file, the update time should work again.

Clean successful.png

If you do not have access to the Modeling tools, you can always manually clean your Excel file via the Clean Workbook feature available in the Log panel.

To do this:

  • Open the Log panel by pressing CTRL + Shift + X in the impacted Excel file.
  • Then click on Tools > Support > Clean Workbook.

cleanWorkbook.png

Manual clean

You can also perform this cleaning manually by following the below steps. This will not require any additional software. 

Important
Please create a copy of your file before proceeding with the manual clean so you don't risk damaging your original file.
  • Create a copy of your file to a local folder. For example, the Downloads folder.

  • Go to your File Explorer > View > Show to display File name extensions.
  • Right-click your file to rename it and change .xlsx or .xlsm to .zip.
    • If your file is a .xlsb, open it and use Save As to save it as an .xlsx first or you won't be able to transform it into a .zip file.

  • Right-click on the file, then click Extract all... and Extract.
  • Open your new unzipped folder and open xl to findworkbook.xml. Right-click on it to open it with any notepad application. Notepad++ is recommended but the native Notepad will do.

  • Use Ctrl + H to find #N/A and replace it with #REF. Click Replace all.

  • Do the exact same operation to replace FDSAUDITLINK with #REF.
  • Do the exact same operation with name="IQ_ with name="#REF. Be sure to include name=" for this search and replace operation.
  • Save your changes and close the workbook.xml.
  • Go back to the root of your unzipped folder. Select all elements and right-click to select Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.

  • Rename the zip file you've just created with your original file name and .xslx as the file extension. Then open it.
  • Click Yes on the message asking you to repair the Excel file.

  • Save and move the repaired file to the folder containing your original file.
  • Open the linked Word or PowerPoint file to update the links with the newly cleaned Excel file as a source. For this step, we recommend having only the cleaned file open.
  • You can delete the folder and the .zip file that is no longer used.

Good practices

To avoid this issue from happening altogether, a good practice is to clean new files before creating links with them. Especially if they are sent to you. This way, the overall file responsiveness will be improved, which, in turn, will improve your UpSlide updates’ performances.

When launching an update, UpSlide checks all opened Excel files to use the latest version of the link available. The more files opened, the longer the update will take. We recommend only keeping the necessary source files open when updating links. If you have opened several files, and only one is corrupted, the update will crash.

You can read this article dedicated to versioning and managing Excel links for more information.

If you are used to cleaning Excel files yourself using macros or other means, do not delete names starting with EXPORT31_. These are the names created by UpSlide to identify links. Deleting them would break the corresponding link.

 

Need any help?
If you still have issues with this error message after cleaning your file or were unable to clean it, you can contact our Support team using Help > Contact Support in the UpSlide ribbon. If you can provide the files, our team will do their best to clean them.